How should I use grep from python?

[Tim Chase]

> I'm writing a command-line application and I want to search through lots
> of text files for a string.  Instead of writing the python code to do
> this, I want to use grep.
> 
> This is the command I want to run:
> 
> $ grep -l foo dir
> 
> In other words, I want to list all files in the directory dir that
> contain the string "foo".
> 
> I'm looking for the "one obvious way to do it" and instead I found no
> consensus.  I could os.popen, commands.getstatusoutput, the subprocess
> module, backticks, etc.  

While it doesn't use grep or external processes, I'd just do it 
in pure Python:

   def files_containing(location, search_term):
     for fname in os.listdir(location):
       fullpath = os.path.join(location, fname)
       if os.isfile(fullpath):
         for line in file(fullpath):
           if search_term in line:
             yield fname
             break
   for fname in files_containing('/tmp', 'term'):
     print fname

It's fairly readable, you can easily tweak the search methods 
(case sensitive, etc), change it to be recursive by using 
os.walk() instead of listdir(), it's cross-platform, and doesn't 
require the overhead of an external process (along with the 
"which call do I use to spawn the function" questions that come 
with it :)

However, to answer your original question, I'd use os.popen which 
is the one I see suggested most frequently.

-tkc